FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MOTEL - PAGE 2

(Repeats for wider audience, story unchanged) By Kathy Finn NEW ORLEANS, April 12 (Reuters) - A six-foot alligator which showed up at the front door of a Baton Rouge-area motel on Wednesday might have departed without incident had it not been for an overly helpful guest, who later checked out of the motel with puncture wounds. A housekeeper at the Super 8 Motel just off Interstate 10 in Port Allen, Louisiana, spotted the gator as it crossed the driveway toward the motel at about 3 p.m. She called a maintenance worker, who called the hotel manager to come take a look.

Life is infinitely more comfortable for the family that lived in a Streamwood storage facility, thanks to the generosity of friends, family and a wide swath of Chicago Tribune readers who stretched from around the block to around the world. Maria Maior, her fiance Shane Palmer and her 12-year-old son Brandon were featured in an Oct. 28 story on the spike in homeless families and students. Their plight sparked an outpouring of donations, from dog food to cash, allowing the family to move out of the cold 10-by-24-foot unit and into an Itasca motel.

Two people face gun and prostitution charges after gunshots were reportedly fired at a Deerfield motel last week, authorities said. Deerfield police officials said that Marvin C. Smith, 27, of Chicago, and Gloria Y. Martinez, 20, of Elkhart, Ind., were arrested June 5 near the Red Roof Inn, 340 S. Waukegan Road, a day after police swarmed the motel on a report that someone had fired a handgun at a vehicle in the parking lot. Smith was charged...

The Herald-News reports: Derek Tanke, 47, of Joliet has been charged with concealment of death, unlawful use of a credit card and ID theft after he stayed in a Joliet motel room with his dead girlfriend's body for about two days and used her debit card to buy vodka and rent two extra days at the motel, police said. Nancy A. Johnston, 54, was found dead in the hotel room Friday morning; officials said her death is not being considered a homicide. Get the full story: heraldnews.suntimes.com

Dolton police are questioning a suspect in the beating death of a 16-year-old girl found in a motel in the south suburb, a spokeswoman said. Gloria Woods was discovered at the Best Motel and Suites at 1335 E. Sibley Blvd. around 11:15 a.m. on Wednesday after a housekeeper alerted authorities. Police at first said she appeared to have been shot in the head, but an autopsy determined she had been beaten. Police are questioning a suspect known by Woods' family, according to TaQuoya Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Dolton police.

A 33-year-old Florida man who persuaded a 13-year-old Will County girl to meet him for sex in a Mokena motel after posing as a 13-year-old boy in a teen-oriented Internet chat room was sentenced today to 20 years in prison. The sentence by Will County Judge Daniel Rozak comes eight months after a Will County jury found Jon Filipkowski of Jensen Beach guilty of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and one count of traveling to meet a minor for sex. Read more at TribLocal.

PORTLAND, Ore., March 12 (Reuters) - Police ended an eight-hour standoff and stormed a motel room in Oregon on Tuesday to arrest an ex-convict accused of killing his grandparents after they had thrown him a party to celebrate his release from prison, authorities said. The suspect, Michael "Chad" Boysen, 26, was taken into custody at about 7 p.m. local time suffering from self-inflicted knife wounds, Lincoln City Police Chief Keith Kilian told Reuters. Kilian said he did not immediately know Boysen's condition.

PARIS, May 22 (Reuters) - French hotel group Accor said it agreed to sell its U.S. budget hotel business for $1.9 billion to U.S. private equity group Blackstone. Accor said it would register an exceptional non-cash loss of 600 million euros ($766 million) linked to the early buyout of fixed-lease hotels as part of the deal. The sale will help the French company cut net debt by about 330 million euros and fixed-lease commitments by about 525 million, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Johnny Carson pokes fun at them in his monologue . . . If you can`t afford a Motel 6, the next best place is the back seat of your car . . . Nearly 80 percent of the rooms are occupied by repeat business, 70 percent of which arrives by family car. Hugh Thrasher, Motel 6 vice president and formerly with an international hotel chain, said the cost of "amenities" (Spanish soap, imported shampoos, oversize towels, sewing kits and such) in some luxury hotels is more than Motel 6's average room rate, which is less than $22. There's no imported soap, but each Motel 6 room has free TV and movies and local phone calls.

The Warrenville City Council this week unanimously approved a change in allocating hotel-motel taxes so some of the money will be saved for future projects. Under the plan, which also was used in 2000, 65 percent of the fund will be allocated to special events, 10 percent to long-term capital projects, 10 percent to public relations and 5 percent to city projects. The remaining 10 percent will be saved. The city usually brings in about $200,000, but it expects more revenue this year because a third hotel recently opened.